For the assistance of individuals with different abilities

Languages

Last May I was able to attend the New England Give Camp. During the camp volunteers dedicated one weekend of time, as well as their developing and design skills, to improve online presentations for non-profit organisations. When I arrived in Boston for the Give Camp, I anticipated that we would just tweak the existing Refuge of Hope website, which by the way was built during the previous year’s Give Camp under the lead of Raymond Plante. However, after meeting the team of volunteers and after evaluating some of the problems, we quickly decided to start from scratch with a brand new site and an updated version of the content management system. I was truly excited to see what we could achieve in 48 hours!

Thanks to perfect project management by Shawn Sippel we were quickly up to speed. While web developer Robin Larson got started with setting up the site, the whole team discussed how the new site should look. With a well-trained eye, web designer Meg Broughton mocked up templates which we quickly implemented. Meg also came up with a fresh new logo, which you can see at the top of the site, and The Refuge of Hope got a totally new branding! HaWook Song helped to migrate content and soon the new site came to life. By the end of the weekend, we were quite exhausted, but thanks to great teamwork, we were very happy with the results. After the weekend, it took some time to clear construction sites, polish a few pages, and add the spanish translations (thanks to Juan Aceros), and finally, Ray could bring the new site online. We really hope you enjoy it. There are more updates to come, so stay tuned!

Again, a BIG thank you to all people involved and to the organizers of the Give Camp 2012.